CHAPTER IX. WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER.
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CHAPTER IX.
WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER.
It was my good fortune when in command of the Arawa Flying Column No. 1 to have attached to me Mounted-Sergeant Christopher Maling, a New Zealand Cross hero. He had been on a week's leave, living with a particular mutual friend of ours, a chief of Ngatituara, and one dark night, when Maling was returning to the chiefs home at Taumataherea, Rotorua, he fell into a boiling spring, and was scalded nearly to his hips. Dr. Hope Lewis, the medical officer in charge at Rotorua, was immediately sent for, and insisted that the sufferer should be taken to a temporary hospital, but his native friends strongly objected, saying that as he was their guest they were responsible for his well-being, and they wished to treat him after the Maori fashion. They had a wider experience in scalds than any other person living, seeing that for nearly seven hundred years their ancestors had lived practically in hot water.
Dr. Hope Lewis insisted on using the ordinary European methods. The natives strongly objected to it, and at last a compromise was arrived at by which Maling's right leg was to be treated Maori fashion, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, was to use his skill in dealing with the left leg, which he immediately proceeded to do by laying it out on lint and saturating it with lime and linseed oil. The natives, on their side, dispatched two old women in a canoe to Hinemoa's Point, some three miles away, where, in a deep lagoon in the middle of a swamp, they were in the habit of procuring a jet black kind of mud, containing much oxide of iron, which they generally used for dyeing the borders of their flax mats. The pond was some thirty feet deep, and the mode of procuring the mud was for the women to swim to the middle of the pool, one with a Maori calabash, while the other dived down, bringing up as much of the liquid mud as she could hold in her clasped hands. This was repeated until the desired quantity was obtained.
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Hurrying back to the bedside of the sufferer, the mud was poured into a wooden trough, and thoroughly manipulated with a stone pestle, pounding up any lumps into impalpable mud. The leg was laid on a strip of calico on a layer of plantain leaves, and the mud baled over it at intervals, eventually covering it evenly, and totally excluding the air. The patient described the mud as most soothing and cool, alleviating all pain, which could not be said of the oil and linseed treatment. The doctor dressed his limb every day, but about the third day the Maori leg (as we shall now call it) became dry and threatened to crack, which the Maoris said was an indication it should be moved, and it would be necessary to put the patient in a warm bath.
Dr. Lewis furiously objected, declaring that his patient should not be touched with hot water, so Maling was then gently lifted on a kauhoa, or Maori stretcher, and carried to a famous bathing pool called Okahukura. The limb was allowed to be covered with the warm water, and by bathing, the mud came away, leaving the skin perfectly clean. Signs of granulation had already set in. The same progress was gone through again, and a fresh coating of mud applied. I cannot say how many times the process was repeated, but in less than two weeks it was quite evident that the leg treated in the Maori fashion would be the first healed, and so it proved. At the end of five weeks it was perfectly well, and it was a case then of waiting for the other leg.
Suffice to say that about two months afterwards the men of Captain Preece's No. 2 Flying Column challenged No. 1 to a football match, which, took place on the famous Pukeroa Hill, when Maling became the hero of the day, outstripping all the others, and obtaining several tries and kicking a goal or two.
The excitement amongst the Maoris was immense, and whenever Maling made a good run shouts of delight went up: "Kuru te Maori Waewae! (Good on the Maori leg). Give him the Maori leg ewery taima!"
My esteemed friend Dr. Lewis, though bitterly disappointed at being outpointed by ignorant savages, was too much of a sport to show it, and applauded Maling's efforts as loudly as anyone.
